Pontoon boats are a type of boat that is extremely popular with boaters today. Pontoon boats are usually constructed out of aluminum, wood, fiberglass, and upholstery. Historically, they have been a very popular segment of the boating industry, because they offer features that appeal to elderly boaters, or those with limited mobility. The features that make them popular to this buying group are a natural bi-product created by the construction techniques used to manufacture pontoon boats.
Pontoon boats historically have two or more separate hulls that displace water at the corners of the boat, instead of mono-hull design boats that have only one hull, or one encompassing waterline to displace the weight of the boat. Pontoon boats get their name from the pontoon hulls that are made from round tubes rolled out of aluminum. Recently, round hull shapes have been enhanced by the addition of strakes, or even completely new shapes to improve the hull's performance to create competitive advantage.
A key selling point to traditional pontoon boats is the very wide interior volume of the boat. Since most boats from 16-29 feet are towed on trailers, they are constructed with a maximum legal road width of 8 foot and 6 inches. Since all trailerable boats share this maximum width, careful attention is paid to maximize the interior width to establish competitive advantage. All of the components of the boat are engineered to maximize this interior width, which has proven to be a major selling factor for pontoon type boats. Traditional fiberglass boats do not offer interior widths that are comparable to aluminum pontoon boats, due to the nature of their construction techniques, and the necessary side wall thickness needed to laminate fiberglass.
Due to the increased popularity of the pontoon style boat, additional features have been added to the boats in the past few years to add competitive edge. New furniture styles with improved quality and features, as well as new fiberglass modules that incorporate driver's seat risers, entertainment and wet bar stations, and ottomans are now commonplace in the pontoon industry. As a result, pontoon boats have increased in weight over the past few years with the addition of new features and amenities. To offset the additional weight of pontoon boats, manufacturers have recently introduced a third, or center pontoon to help displace the additional weight of the new improvements. This new genre of pontoon boat is often referred to as a Tri-Toon.
The Tri-Toon has become a very popular segment of the aluminum pontoon boat market; however, increased costs of wood, plastics, aluminum, and vinyl have made them prohibitively expensive to build. Additionally, the traditional aluminum construction is prohibitive to many of the modern features being pioneered in other segments of the boating industry.